1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging apparatus and a related processing method capable of enlarging a dynamic range while suppressing generation of color mixture.
2. Description of the Related Art
A solid-state image sensor, such as a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS), can be used in a digital camera or other imaging apparatuses. However, compared to general silver-halide photography, the solid-state image sensor has a narrow dynamic range. To solve this drawback, there are various dynamic range enlarging methods (refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-18471).
For example, according to an image sensor discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-18471, saturated charge overflows a photoelectric conversion section and flows into a reading section if a light quantity of incident light exceeds a saturation light quantity of the photoelectric conversion section. The reading section reads an overflow amount of the electric charge.
However, a reading section of an actually used image sensor is not arranged to realize the reading mechanism discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-18471. Therefore, when the method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-18471 is applied to an ordinary image sensor, the generation of color mixture in the reading section is much greater compared to that in the photoelectric conversion section.